Tales from the Black Hat NOC
pope
SAINTCON 2025 · Day 4 · Main Track 1
James "Pope" Pope's "Tales from the Black Hat NOC" delivers a candid and eye-opening account of the real-world security challenges observed by the Network Operations Center (NOC) at one of the world's premier cybersecurity conferences, Black Hat. As the SOC Lead for the Black Hat NOC, Pope and his team are tasked with building, maintaining, and defending a temporary, high-stakes network environment for thousands of security professionals. This talk transcends theoretical discussions, offering a ground-level view of the pervasive vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and outright malicious activities that persist even among a highly security-aware audience.